Lilo & Stitch stars Maia Kealoha and Sydney Agudong may play on-screen siblings, but off screen, they say they’ve become sisters as well.
The duo, who portray Lilo and Nani Pelekai, respectively, in the reimagined live-action version of the iconic 2002 Disney animated film, said they built a special bond as sisters in the film, but also in real life.
“I think we both felt a very special bond,” Agudong, 24, told Good Morning America. “We just loved each other, which was really huge.”
Maia, 8, added, “There’s nothing that we don’t like about each other. As soon as we met, we felt like, ‘Oh my gosh, is she my long-lost sister?'”
Like the animated film, the updated 2025 movie centers around Lilo and Nani, who lose their parents in a car accident.
When Nani overhears Lilo wishing for a friend, she lets her sister adopt a dog. The dog happens to be Stitch, an alien from planet Turo, who crash lands into Earth.
At its core, the film centers around the importance of ohana, a Hawaiian term meaning family, and that family means “nobody gets left behind or forgotten.”
When it came to casting Nani and Lilo, director Dean Fleischer Camp said chemistry was the most important part, and that Agudong and Maia had that.
“They have an undeniable sisterly chemistry,” he said. “When we read Maia with Sydney, it was just so clear from the jump that these two had a spark, and they felt like sisters immediately, and that only continued to grow and deepen.”
Lilo & Stitch surfs into theaters May 23.
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